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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS ideas; and suspend all critical judgement. The temptation to become
judgemental of the individual ideas during a robust period of what
could be construed as sustained criticism is very tempting but must be
avoided.

At this stage, it is not important that you differentiate cause from effect,
an exercise which will be undertaken during the next convergent phase.
It is important to surface every type and scale of problem imaginable –
from the type of problem that wakes you up in a sweat at night, to the
nagging doubt at the back of your mind which just will not go away, to
other entrepreneurs in other sectors whose experience made you think
‘There, but for the grace of God, go I’, to the type of problem you had
not considered until now.

A mind-map of the issues facing Ingvar Kamprad’s attempt to enter the
Swedish furniture market might have included the elements shown in
Figure 6.2 below, for example.

Furniture passed
from generation to

generation

Traditional town- Conventional retail
centre locations model highly
very expensive
labour-intensive

Market dominated IKEA Inability to
by wealthy upper- recruit trained
professionals
middle class

Supply and Conventional
distribution raw materials

cartel expensive

Figure 6.2 Mind-map of blocks to implementation for IKEA

reverse brainstorming: step two The second step moves you back
into convergent thinking. You should cluster related themes together;
disentangle causes from their effects; enhance and develop the strong
ideas, combining ideas where appropriate; and eliminate the ‘wild
ideas’ and ‘intermediate impossibles’ where they have led up a blind
alley.